Travel plans are being disrupted across northern Europe as a strike in Finland enters its third day.
The Finnish aviation labour union, IAU, informed Finnair of a support strike which began on Monday November 25, related to the ongoing labour dispute at Posti, the Finnish postal service. Finnair is not a party in the dispute, but the planned support strike has has major impacts on Finnair flights operations.
The strike has affected several critical services at Helsinki Airport, including ground services such as loading and unloading of aircraft, fueling and push-back of aircraft, as well as Finnair customer services at Helsinki Airport, catering of Finnair flights and Finnair maintenance operations.
Finnair has already cancelled 26 flights from Sunday and will now cancel approximately 250 more flights. A list of the cancelled flights and information for customers is available at https://www.finnair.com/fi-en/flight-information/travel-updates
“Finnair is not a party in the dispute related to the support strike, however it’s impacts are now seriously disrupting the travel plans of over 20 000 Finnair customers,” says Jaakko Schildt, Chief Operating Officer, Finnair.
“We are extremely sorry for the trouble and concern this situation is causing our customers, and we are doing our best to mitigate the impacts to them. We are working to find suitable reroutings for customers impacted by this, but rerouting such a large number of customers unfortunately takes some time.”
Finnair informs its customers of flight cancellations via short messages and email, and offers reroutings to customers, whose flights are cancelled. As availability of alternative flights is limited, rerouting may take some time. Customers can check their new routings via Finnair’s web pages. If a suitable rerouting is not possible, customers can seek a refund for the ticket price.
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